Transportation News & Views

Gallery: Little Tokyo/Arts District Station

Gary Leonard photographs Los Angeles. You’ve seen his photos. Was it Gorbachev in front of Los Angeles City Hall? His book-length study in black and white of the construction of Disney Hall? (It was a book, actually.) Audrey Hepburn at the airport? The vacant doorstep (left vacant by The Doors) of the Morrison Hotel?

Leonard is the staff photographer for the Downtown News and the official/unofficial photographer for Los Angeles. Now, as the Eastside Extension of the Metro Gold Line is about to open this coming weekend, Metro asked Leonard to photograph each of the eight new stations — many still draped in yellow caution tape and still hushed, waiting for the first official trains to roll this weekend.

We’ll be posting Leonard’s photos here in coming days. We’ll start with the first station south of Union Station, the stop at Little Tokyo/Arts District, which the Metro Art department describes this way:

The unique features of this station are the result of the collaboration between performance artist Hirokazu Kosaka and Ted Tokio Tanaka Architects.

The station canopies are in the shape of Japanese archery bows while the platform paving design is patterned after a Japanese tatami mat. In archery a perfect shot requires the release of an arrow in the instant between one’s heartbeats: a moment in time and space with no intervening thoughts. This moment inspired the design for the platform bench artworks. The artist created six smooth granite benches with concentric circles of black and white, simulating a Zen archery target.

Take a tour. Click on images to view gallery and ‘next’ for slideshow.